Ex-COG Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 We have an interim pastor at my Unitarian Church who is a deist. She said something this past Sunday that kind of bothered me. She was talking on her belief in a deity and the possibility of angels, which is fine, Unitarians can believe anything they want. But she told of discussing her beliefs with someone who was a scientist, and defending her belief in a God that she can't see by saying "Can you see electrons, neutrons, and protrons? If not, how do you know they are there?" She then mentioned the tired mantra of science being a faith, a belief system. I thought only Christians said that! Anyway, I was kind of daydreaming at that point in the sermon, but perked up when I heard her comments on science. What I want to know is, how would you refute her claim? Yes, you can't see atom particles, etc. but you know they are there through...what... scientific discoveries of reactions? What type of observations? I don't really want to go and argue with her; she's temporary (thank the cosmos) but I just want to know how to explain it for myself. I don't have a strong science background. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 ExCog - I'm sorry, but she sounds like an idiot. Yeah, people can believe anything they want, and do -- but it becomes tiresome to hear stupid statements. Why would anyone build a particle accelerator (CERN in Switzerland) miles long to observe the traces of subatomic particles that don't exist? What about the whole of 20th century science of quantum physics - just imaginary? There have probably been thousands of experiments upholding the existence of electrons, neutrons and protons. There are pictures of the traces they leave. And I don't know much about science, I am sure someone else will help me out here. Science a belief system I would not have been able to restrain laughter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraphicsGuy Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Yeah, we still don't have the ability to *see* atoms and their components in detail, but we can certainly see cause and effect of using them in certain manners. There is tons of evidence for their existence and properties. No matter what, with God or "gods" you don't see any evidence at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-COG Posted December 14, 2007 Author Share Posted December 14, 2007 I know, it all sounded funny to me. Just like how the New Agers are so pumped up about quantum mechanics, relativity, wave-particle duality, etc., using them to legitimize their beliefs about creating your own reality. We need a "Society for the Prevention of Religious Abuse Against Science." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WarrantedPVC Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 You CAN "see" electrons... You do that every day when you watch TV (well, probably not the flatscreen type), or one of the old CRT monitors. They have "electron guns" in them - electrons are produced by a so-called "cathode ray tube" (hence the abbreviation, CRT!), basically by putting a voltage between the cathode and the anode, resulting in electrons coming from the cathode towards the anode. How do we know they are electrons? Well, they seem to have just the right properties, all of which can be measured with very high precision. For example, we can measure their mass-to-charge ratio by putting a magnetic field while they travel, and seeing how they are deflected (everyone has put a magnet on their TV screen and seen pretty colors... that's why you get them!!). A guy called Milikan could measure their charge very precisely in the famous oil-drop experiment early in the 20th century. (Standard physics textbooks will explain what that experiment was like, if your pastor is interested!) Now, protons and neutrons... Well, the first evidence of the existence of atomic nuclei (ie. protons+neutrons) came from an observation that when people fired electrons on a golden layer, a very small portion of them fired straight back, but some passed through. (Rutherford's experiment) The only way this could happen was that in some places in the material there was something from which electrons would deflect... but in other places there was nothing, so they could pass through. This made it quite easy to suppose that materials were made up of mostly nothing, but in some places there was something really very impenetrable. In order for it to be impenetrable, it also had to be the opposite charge to the electron. This something was named "nucleus". At that point they didn't know what the nucleus was made of, they only knew it had to be very heavy and positive. Rutherford, who was fond of alpha particles (now we know they're two protons and two neutrons, coming from a nitrogen nucleus), tried shooting some of them at nitrogen gas. He set up a detector to track whatever came out; it detected some positively charged things that were neither alpha particles nor nitrogen nuclei. They had the same mass and charge as hydrogen nuclei (now we know they're single protons)! Rutherford concluded that each nitrogen nucleus contained hydrogen nuclei, knocked out by the alpha particles. And I could go on and on... Every step in the process of identifying these particles has a famous experiment associated with it and all of this is quite easy to do even in a mediocre physics lab. Maybe your pastor would benefit from a visit to one of those... All of this is far, far from "belief". You don't have to go to heaven to see it for yourself!! PVC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 What? We can't see particles? What the heck is it that we see then? Photons are reflected on particles and atoms, and that's what and how we see, so they exist because we experience them through vision. The reflexes are as real as our visual capability, and the photons are hitting something! So you don't see one (1) atom, but you see 10,000,000,000,000 when you just open your eyelids. Besides that, yes, they are able to see particles, using electron microscopes. And another thing, electronics are the proof electrons exist, because how they behave, exist and their attributes all comes together in the theory of how the electrons exist and behaves and what kind of attributes they have. Without them, nothing electronic would work, because electrons would be electrons if they didn't act like electrons supposed to act in electronics. It's a bad argument to use particles etc. Just because you can't see individual particles with your natural eye, it doesn't mean we can test and prove that they are there and how they react. After all, they didn't just make up the idea of particles and they made a whole science about it, and it's just a make up fantasy. Nothing around us would work. 100% of your day is controlled and dependent on the science of particles, electrons, protons etc. While 0% of our day have any influence from a God that can do any miracles or show his power. Next thing, we can see the electrons and even quarks in experiements using particle accelerators. (And what the heck is accelerated in a particle accelerator if particles don't exist? Bobcats? Mars bars? Or the cable guy?) Following image is not computer generated: And then we have this article from 2004: NRC Team First to Record Image of an Electron Orbital(December 16, 2004 – Ottawa, ON.) A National Research Council of Canada (NRC) research team has, for the first time, recorded an image of a single electron inside a molecule. The technique, based on medical tomography, is described in the December 16th issue of the science journal Nature. "This discovery has a significant impact on any industry where chemistry is involved, such as the pharmaceutical sector. Armed with this knowledge, one can imagine new drugs that are not only more effective but are also cheaper to manufacture, or new chemical processing methods that are less harmful to the environment" says NRC President Michael Raymont. Molecules are made up of atoms that are bound together by their electrons. The electrons whiz around the atoms in orbits that are defined by quantum mechanics. Because Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says that an electron cannot be precisely observed, each electron orbital has a fuzzy shape. Using intense femtosecond lasers, the NRC team ripped the outermost electron from a nitrogen molecule. Under the rules of quantum mechanics, part of the electron is removed from the molecule, and at the same time, the other part of the electron remains in the molecule. The two "parts" of the electron were made to interfere and as a result emitted x-ray radiation. Just as in computed tomography (CT), where the x-ray source is rotated around the patient, the NRC team rotated the nitrogen molecule slowly in a vacuum chamber and took projections of the orbital shape. The 3-dimensional image is the first-ever picture of a single molecular orbital. These images are recorded in only a few femtoseconds, faster than molecules can vibrate. The NRC team plans to observe chemical bonds being broken. This work may lead to a better understanding of chemistry. It may also lead researchers into the attosecond frontier, to observe individual electrons as they move inside an atom. One attosecond is the result of dividing a second into a billion billion sections or 10-18 seconds. In fact, there are as many attoseconds in one second, as there are seconds in the age of the universe! "Who would have guessed," asks Dr. Paul Corkum of NRC's Femtosecond Science Group, "that the science of making the fastest measurements (attosecond science) would also turn out to be the science of making very precise measurements involving an electron in an atom or molecule?" "We now have a method for filming the small, fast-moving and violent world of atoms and molecules, almost as we might film our own world with a conventional video camera." Now I wonder... do they have anything as evidentiary as this for the concept and existence of God? Maybe a photo, or just something like a bubble chamber or similar where God's power leaves a trail? (Damn, Warranted posted before me. I wrote this, but got interrupted before I clicked finished. Then finished and you did it first. ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WarrantedPVC Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Yeah, we still don't have the ability to *see* atoms and their components in detail, Uh... we CAN see atoms. That's what a Scanning-Tunneling Microscope does..... http://science.howstuffworks.com/atom10.htm You can even use the tip to position individual atoms and do "art"... Who says scientists hate art?? http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/atomo.html PVC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Thanks, PVC and Hans. I was going to bring up the television, but I didn't know how to explain it properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YDOAPS Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Oh crap! Atoms don't exist! How could I be so foolish going through all that school to become fine nuclear mechanic I am? I can't believe I wasted so much time on those lies! It's all so obvious now. My reactor is really hamsters running on their wheels! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Oh crap! Atoms don't exist! How could I be so foolish going through all that school to become fine nuclear mechanic I am? I can't believe I wasted so much time on those lies! It's all so obvious now. My reactor is really hamsters running on their wheels! Nothing quite like a wasted education, is there, YDOAPS? As I said, why build all those pesky, expensive particle accelerators like CERN? Why employ thousands of scientists? Isn't it all just a belief? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Oh, I have a better one. Bits don't exists. The 0 (zero) and 1 (ones) that the computer is based upon. All the electronics, computer technology and networking etc is based on those pesky bits, and we can't see them. So they can't exist. But heck, God exists since we can neither see him or see any effects of influence from him. The bits only show their presence a trillion times a second to each one of us through the miracle of a computer screen and CPU etc... but God doesn't need to do one miracle to prove his existence. If only God could do as many miracles once in our world as the amount of invisible bits flying through my network cable during one second, and we wouldn't have one sick person in the world, or anyone hungry or any wars. So God... show that you at least exist as little as a binary bit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piprus Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 We have an interim pastor at my Unitarian Church who is a deist. She said something this past Sunday that kind of bothered me. She was talking on her belief in a deity and the possibility of angels, which is fine, Unitarians can believe anything they want. But she told of discussing her beliefs with someone who was a scientist, and defending her belief in a God that she can't see by saying "Can you see electrons, neutrons, and protrons? If not, how do you know they are there?" She then mentioned the tired mantra of science being a faith, a belief system. I thought only Christians said that! Anyway, I was kind of daydreaming at that point in the sermon, but perked up when I heard her comments on science. What I want to know is, how would you refute her claim? Yes, you can't see atom particles, etc. but you know they are there through...what... scientific discoveries of reactions? What type of observations? I don't really want to go and argue with her; she's temporary (thank the cosmos) but I just want to know how to explain it for myself. I don't have a strong science background. /From a Deist point of new, I would only take the statement as a challenge to think.... So I would respond to her sermon by saying, "Yes, indeed we cannot see individual electons, protons, and neutrons. Nor can we see such things as the wind, the warmth of the spring. Our interpretation of what is "there" depends on our perspective, which is the essance of Deism." And that is that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celsus Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Christians do not have a monopoly on stupid statements to support their beliefs, as this story illustrates. My guess is that this woman is probably an Ex-Christian, who is still trying to justify her belief in a deistic god with the apologetic arguments she used or was taught in Christianity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ nivek ♦ Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Have reason to believe that Preacher Lady has far too many Morons flyin' loose in her grey matter... Morons are heavier than the rest of the particulates and tend to congregate in the highest spots they can attain, thus fuckin' up the thought processes.. Simple to me.. kL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GraphicsGuy Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Uh... we CAN see atoms. That's what a Scanning-Tunneling Microscope does..... Developed in 1981!!!!...???????????????? My fucking science teachers were useless! And how come when I looked up the subject of seeing atoms last month not one forum mentioned this? Bah! Thanks, PVC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fweethawt Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 I don't know if anyone else has caught it yet (since I didn't read all of the posts), but what the fuck is a protron?!?!?! I'm dying to find out if it was a typo in this thread, or if the "teacher" actually called it that... Hey! I went'n dug around for this little tid-bit. I almost forgot about it... CLICK HERE - (it's on-site) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 WOW! That's a very clear picture of a Protron! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
par4dcourse Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Fwee, the post on religinium had me lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-COG Posted December 14, 2007 Author Share Posted December 14, 2007 Christians do not have a monopoly on stupid statements to support their beliefs, as this story illustrates. My guess is that this woman is probably an Ex-Christian, who is still trying to justify her belief in a deistic god with the apologetic arguments she used or was taught in Christianity. She was introduced as having served as interim pastor for both Unitarian-Universalist Churches and the United Church of Christ, which is a very liberal Christian denomination. So I figured we'd get some god messages, I just didn't figure she would pop out with something like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-COG Posted December 14, 2007 Author Share Posted December 14, 2007 /From a Deist point of new, I would only take the statement as a challenge to think....So I would respond to her sermon by saying, "Yes, indeed we cannot see individual electons, protons, and neutrons. Nor can we see such things as the wind, the warmth of the spring. Our interpretation of what is "there" depends on our perspective, which is the essance of Deism." And that is that. Perfect. My brother-in-law is a deist, and he uses the example of the wind, the seasons, and other forms of nature as why he believes in God. That's his perspective, and I wouldn't doubt that the interim pastor would say the same thing. I just find it odd that she would "push" the idea on us, which was the impression I had. It was a gentle push which didn't dominate the whole message, but still... I'm sure there were others in attendence who felt the same way as I. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest reasonist Posted December 25, 2007 Share Posted December 25, 2007 If electrons, neutrons and protons don't exist, how did the atomic bomb work? There wasn't any TNT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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